Michael Savage Hates Free Speech

Conservative radio talkshow host Michael Savage has been sued in federal court in San Francisco by a liberal film group for making an allegedly baseless demand that YouTube Inc. take down one of its videos.

The video by Brave New Films was entitled Savage Hates Muslims and criticized an October 29, 2007, broadcast in which Savage…comments that Muslims should "take [their] religion and shove it up [their] behind" and should be deported….

YouTube did take down the video and temporarily disabled the entire YouTube channel of Brave New Films, according to the group. Brave New Films claims in the lawsuit that the take-down notice for the Savage Hates Muslims video was baseless because the excerpts were used for political commentary and thus protected by the legal doctrine of fair use.

Indeed, Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films also "claims the radio network and Savage engaged in 'knowing misrepresentation' because" just this July, one judge "dismissed a copyright infringement claim Savage filed against the Washington, D.C., based Council on American-Islamic Relations for using four minutes of excerpts from Savage's broadcast."

[…] is not put on hold while the procedure of notices of copyright infringement and arguments of noninfringement plays out." His more public-minded solution: "The presumption should be that material remains […]